Poetry of Kansas Here & Now, There & Then

No one said it would be easy. If they did, they lied, but then don’t they all?
It’s so easy to get discouraged when the prairie wind howls despair.
Some days, though, we wake at dawn and walk south,
through the horse pasture and down to the creek when the air
sparkles with dawn fog and sunlight, yellow flowers lining the well-worn path
our feet remember from childhood, our hearts remember from the time before, an era
when the Osage walked this prairie before the raiders burned it black
and pushed out deer and bobcat, coyote, man, woman, child, horse and dog, bear.
This land of strip malls and dollar stores, trailers and tornado debris
is a barren land, but it has good bones, and in the blackest night, the stars still dare to shine.